When I add a reference to my project, I usually want to use Specific Version = FALSE. This is because our automated build will set the version number. I see the default behavior is to be TRUE.
Is there a way to change this? Counting on manually changing that value is error prone (and I end up breaking the build).
There's not a way to change the default. If you're using TFS you could probably apply a check-in rule, but I am unsure if a check-in rule can be applied to a .csproj or .sln file.
I would say you should not change the assembly version with each build. You should use the file version for that purpose.
Suzanne Cooke has a nice blog post explaining it in detail, but that summary is that the file version of an assembly need not be the same than the assembly version and for builds you need to up the file version the whole time and not the assembly version.